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Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Roosevelt, AZ - April 2009

FLW STREN

Roosevelt, AZ

April 2009

Cris Ricci and I reached Lake Roosevelt for the 1st time in 20 years, and to my surprise the lake was full to the brim. I had not seen the lake since the new dam has been built. The lake was full of sold brush from 0-10'. It looked like a spinner bait heaven.

We were so excited we tied our spinner baits on, launched the boat and raced across the lake. On our first cast we each hooked up with a 2 lb fish. That evening we continued to catch about 10 fish each up to 4 lbs.

We woke up the next morning anticipating a great bite, but to our surprise we couldn't even buy a bite.

We started dropshotting and fishing senko's and caught a few fish in the slot. I decided to start pitch and flip the brush with a brush hog discovering the fish tight in the brush. After gaining 4 fish on Chris he quickly switched to a brush hog. We found that the fish were on the sides of the coves and in the back. They were staging to spawn in the brush about 8' deep. By the end of the day we had caught approximately 50 fish. It was definitely hard to catch an "over". Of the 50 we had about 6 overs.

The next day our focus was trying to figure out what the big ones were doing. We started fishing deeper water, drop shot and shaking worms down to 20'. By the end of the day we had found 4 areas holding some overs in about 20', but the bite was really slow. We ended up catching about 20 fish with 8 of them overs.

The following day I went out with my good friend Any Manahl (owner of Mattress Depot of Phoenix). He went out with me trying to help me find better quality fish, and to no avail we wound up with only 6 overs.

The next day Chris Ricci, Tami Curtis, and I went up the river, pitching and flipp'n the heavy brush. The brush was so thick and heavy that we would go through breaking the limbs creating a path. We would then leave it to rest for about 1/2 hour only to go through again fishing it thoroughly. After doing that all day, the boat ended up with battle wounds and looking like a huge mesquite tree with all of the debris. For all our hard work we ended up with 10 keepers but nothing over 3 lbs. We were running out of sinkers, got off the water early, headed to the The Tackle Box to visit our friends.

The next day we went out and found that a lot of the fish had moved on the bank, spawning and some were guarding fry. The top water bite was wide open for spooks and vixons. We found that it was hard to catch the overs. Once again we ended up with only about 10 overs out of 60.

The cold front with some wind moved through which kind up shut down the shallow water bite.

Going into the tournament armed with spooks, spinnerbaits, brush hogs, jigs, and senkos, not knowing what to expect - I wound up with 2 overs and 1 slot. I had lost 2 overs in the heavy brush. The keepers came on brush hogs in about 20' of water.

The next day I decided to make a change, I pushed the spinnerbait hard until about 10 am catching 15 fish with no overs. The sun was high, and there was no wind, so I decided to make a switch going to a weightless senko fishing the outside brush line keeping the boat in about 12' of water. I weighed in a limit of 9 lbs 15 oz moving me up. At least I salvaged the tournament, placing 30th, taking home a check.

Congrats to my prefishing team and friends:

Duane Dunstone qualifying for his 1st top 10 in 2nd place and finishing in 6th

Tami Curtis moving from 55th to 32 place cashing a paycheck

Last but not least Congrats to all the top 10 guys and to Roy Hawk winning the tournament "You're the Man"

As you travel to Lake Roosevelt, stop by the Tackle Box. Tell John, Frank, and Tom, I said "hi" .